1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a docking station, and more particularly, to a docking station for a portable computer installed thereon being smoothly detached therefrom.
2. Description of Related Art
The most significant difference of a portable computer from a desktop computer rests in that the portable computer pursues light-slim-short-small figures so that the user thereof can easily carry the portable computer and the user is allowed to manipulate the computer under various environments. On the other hand, restricted by the light-slim-short-small design requirements, in terms of functions and expansion possibility, the portable computer can not be mentioned in the same breath with a desktop computer having the overwhelming advantage of a larger operational space.
Accordingly, a docking station was developed in the prior art, wherein the docking station has a connector, so that a user can connect computer peripheral equipments such as mouse, printer, external hard disk, network interface card (NIC), scanner or others to the docking station in long term way, and whenever the user needs the peripheral equipments, the user just connects the portable computer to the docking station so as to link the computer with the peripheral equipments. In this way, a user not only enjoys the light and handy feature of a portable computer, but also is exempted from the troubles of putting in for connection and putting out for disconnection between the portable computer and the peripheral equipments by means of the docking station; meanwhile, the user has the same benefits in terms of functions and expansion possibility as a desktop computer.
In a conventional docking station, the portable computer and the docking station are fixed together by means of a plurality of hooks disposed on the docking station to lock the corresponding locking slots of the computer. Whenever a user want to detach the portable computer from the docking station, the user would exert a force transmitted to the hooks via transmission components so as to disengage the hooks from the locking slots of the computer, and then, another force exerted by the user is transmitted to other extracting components via the transmission components so as to extract the portable computer.
FIG. 1A is a top-view diagram of a conventional docking station and FIGS. 1B and 1C are diagrams of the docking station of FIG. 1A in different viewing angles. Referring to FIGS. 1A, 1B and 1C, in order to detach a portable computer (not shown) from a docking station 1, a user needs to pull the pulling portion 102 of a knob 10, so that a push-end 101a pushes a push-linkage 35 to move on a supporting component 34 along the axial direction of the push-linkage 35. At the time, a secondary push-linkage 355 pivoted on a pivot 354 drives a sliding block 357 to move, and a slanted surface of the sliding block 357 enables a lifting component 20 for upwards moving.
Meanwhile, another secondary push-linkage 356 pivoted on the pivot (not indicated) drives another sliding block 358, the slanted surface of the sliding block 358 pushes the slanted surface 410 of the swinging arm 41 of a swinging device 40, so that the swinging arm 41 swings upwards and thereby the two hook bodies 42 disposed on the both ends of a rotation shaft 153 unhook from the locking slots of the portable computer. Finally, the portable computer is upwards extracted by means of the upwards moving of the lifting component 20.
In the conventional docking station 1, to unhook the hook bodies 42 from the locking slots of the portable computer and to upwards extract the portable computer by using the lifting component 20, a plurality of components are needed for driving. During transmitting forces, the exerted forces may be reduced due to the friction between the components and the alteration of the transmission directions, which makes the unhooking effect of the hook bodies 42 and the extracting effect of the lifting component 20 fail to achieve the expected levels. In this regard, how to enhance the unhooking effect and the extracting effect so as to smoothly detach the portable computer from the docking station 1 is an important issue to be solved currently.